


Moments

by FletcherHonorama



Series: the Circle, Updated [3]
Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, lots of other characters but only briefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-13 20:52:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 4,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10521630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FletcherHonorama/pseuds/FletcherHonorama
Summary: Series of drabbles following the four Circle kids through their teenage years, post Circle Updated. Some plot, some not. Basically the skeleton of everything, in a perfect world, I would want to write about them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! I wrote these a while ago hoping they'd springboard and give me a direction to start a longer fic, but it doesn't seem to be happening at the moment. I'm not ruling out a proper story happening in the future, not at all, but I thought I'd share what I have done all the same. Like the summary says, it's really a skeleton of the ideas I do have in my mind for the future, so if you'd rather hold out for some more meat-and-bones stuff later on, be aware that these might serve as kind of spoilers for anything I do write later, or might not even really match up with it in the end.
> 
> It's roughly chronological, but they're separate pieces, not really written with a *collection* in mind per se. There will be 10 groups of 4, unless I end up writing more as we go, and I'll probably update every couple of days or so.
> 
> Hope you enjoy :)

“There are all kinds of pronouns you can use,” said Sandry, face lit up like a Christmas tree. “We can use whichever you want, you just have to pick the ones you like.”

“I have,” said Tris. “I told you.”

“But –”

“I don’t care if you’re disappointed,” said Tris, starting to feel those telltale pinpricks of anger. “If you’re so desperate to show that you learned something on the internet, you use them. I don’t want to.”

“But why not? I know you don’t –”

“She’s still wearing dresses and nighties too,” said Briar, cracking open one eye. “Let her be.”

~o~o~o~

It was a joke, Briar going to school, and everyone knew it. He couldn’t write, could barely read and was six years behind everyone else who was gonna be there. He already knew how to work for his living, and no way any of these kids knew that yet. He belonged in a school just about as much as he belonged in the Country Women’s Association.

That’s why he was going in alone with Lark to meet the principal: because there was no way they’d take him, and they wanted to save him the embarrassment of everyone else seeing it.

~o~o~o~

“Not like Irish-Irish, though,” she insisted. “Where are you from originally?”

Daja hated getting drawn into these kinds of conversations, but she still hadn’t found a reliable way to get out of them. “I was born in Dublin,” she said. “My mother was from Dublin and my father from Galway.”

“Where’s that?”

Daja didn’t blink. “Ireland.”

“What about your –”

“Are you going to tell me your whole family tree as well?” Daja asked, irked. “How many generations of it have you memorised?”

Jasmine pouted. “I was just wondering.”

“And I already told you where I’m from,” said Daja, “originally.”

~o~o~o~

Sandry shook her head. “You can’t have it. It’s ours. It’s us.”

“This artifact could be far more dangerous than you realise,” said Niko. “Your magics are merging together unpredictably and beyond your control. What, if I may ask, do you think the resolution of this predicament is likely to be?”

 _He’s doing it again,_ said Briar. _Whenever he gets upset he starts with this jabber. What’s he saying?_

“No,” said Sandry. “You can’t have it.”

 _He might have to_ , said Tris.

“No,” said Sandry.

 _Where is it going to end?_ Daja asked sensibly. _What if it doesn’t end?_

“No.”


	2. Chapter 2

  


“They were horrible to you, I remember,” said Aymery. “Always yelling and complaining. You did twice as much as work around the house as I ever did, and nobody ever bothered to thank you.”

“You did,” Tris pointed out. “I remember you did.”

“Yeah, well,” said Aymery. “It’s not much, is it? A thank you?”

“It’s scarcity that creates value,” said Tris. “So you tell me.”

Aymery took a moment to absorb that. Slowly he started to smile, then laugh. Tris hated being laughed at, but somehow she didn’t mind it from Aymery. He was her favourite cousin, after all.

~o~o~o~

“Here,” said Briar, digging in his pocket. “I got you something.”

“Really?” said Sandry, her eyes bright.

Briar pulled out a big banksia cone, absolutely covered in open follicles. “I saw it and thought of you,” he said, not quite hiding the mischief in his eyes.

Sandry took it from him and turned it over in her hands. “Why?”

Briar made a mouth out of each hand and flapped them together at Sandry.

“Oh, shut up,” she said, poking at him with her foot. 

He shuffled back on the couch out of her reach, grinning. “No need to thank me.”

~o~o~o~

“I can learn it,” offered Sandry. “We can practise together.”

How was Daja supposed to explain to her that having to teach Sandry her own language wasn’t at all what she wanted? Daja missed Irish Saturdays, where not a word of English could be spoken in the house, where the tables were turned and it had been Daja’s father who found himself most often lost for words. She missed teasing her mother about Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. She missed bilingual jokes.

Sandry couldn’t help with that. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

“I know,” said Sandry. “But it could still be something.”

~o~o~o~

Flick’s eyelids fluttered open as Briar shut the door behind him. “Mmmrph.”

“Ali says hey but he was too chicken to come,” said Briar. “Shove over.”

Flick wriggled sideways on the bed so Briar could hop up and sit alongside her. “What’s crackin’?” she mumbled. She didn’t seem more than half awake. 

Briar sighed. “Whips. Big ones.”

“Lucky me, out of school on a pissweak excuse like this.” Flick made it partway to a grin and then a cough caught her.

Briar gritted his teeth and put on his best cheer. “You’ll be back soon,” he said. “Count on it.”


	3. Chapter 3

  


_This is your uncle?_ said Briar. _Really?_

 _I doubt he’s someone she pulled in off the street,_ said Tris.

 _He’s my father’s uncle_ , said Sandry. _Now stop being rude and start talking out loud._

“Hi,” said Briar.

“Good to meet you, Briar,” said Vedris. He held out his hand to Briar, who shook it awkwardly. Sandry would find out what his problem was later.

 _I thought you said he was some government dude_ , Briar said when Vedris turned to shake Daja’s hand next.

_He is._

_He’s brown, but._

_That doesn’t mean he can’t be in government_ , Sandry said, surprised.

_Well…_

~o~o~o~

Daja liked to use her body, and she needed to be strong. She had played football back home, but over here they called it soccer and all her teammates had been white, much smaller than she was and friends with each other already. Daja believed in always finishing the things she started, but she didn’t believe in masochism.

Then Skyfire came to visit, and his strong accent and rusty attempts at speaking Irish made Daja smile, and when he offered to teach her some bataireacht during his stay he was, in that moment, her very favourite person in the world. 

~o~o~o~

It wasn’t just the eleven bucks an hour why Briar worked at Gorse’s restaurant after school three days a week. It wasn’t even the money plus the food he got. It wasn’t even the money and food and the chance to brush up on his Mandarin – well, polish it into something respectable, anyway – all together that brought him there.

He liked Gorse. Gorse was kind like Lark but not soppy. He was Briar’s boss, not his parent or teacher. He didn’t have expectations except competence and a work ethic, and Briar had both.

It was an easy place to be.

~o~o~o~

“They can’t,” said Tris. “They _can’t._ ”

“Watch them,” said Briar.

“It’s done,” said Daja. “As soon as it’s online anywhere, it’s done and dusted.”

“There’s all kinds of crazy shit online,” said Briar. “No one’s gonna notice.”

“Tris?” said Sandry. “Tris?” She put her hand on Tris’s shoulder. Sparks ran over it and up her arm, but she didn’t flinch.

“It’s on a fancy camera, but,” Briar pointed out. “Might take a while to upload.”

Tris knew what to do. She shook Sandry off.

“No,” Sandry whispered urgently.

Tris took in a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. “I warned them.”


	4. Chapter 4

Tris knew very well that if her hair gathered lightning, it had to go. What had happened was never, ever going to happen again, and whatever had to be done to make her less dangerous to everything around her, she was going to do. 

It was silly, really, to be so concerned about a haircut. It wasn’t as though she was going to miss the way longer hair misbehaved.

Tris hated her looks, but at least she was used to them. Dealing with that old, familiar angst wasn’t too difficult; adjusting to a new one would hurt all over again.

~o~o~o~

Sandry stood in the middle of her room and looked around. The obvious ones were already done: yatak, kapı, pencere, duvar, masa, sandalye.

“Sandalye,” she said out loud, feeling out every syllable.

Her eyes fell on her photo frame, currently showing a selfie of her and Pirisi at the Taj Mahal. With a lump in her throat, Sandry went back to her sticky notes, wrote “aile” on the top one and peeled it off.

The picture changed to a picture of her and mum and dad smiling at the beach. “Sizi seviyorum,” she said carefully, and stuck the note on.

~o~o~o~

It used to be that white people snagged Briar’s attention when he saw them. They stood out to him like a little flashing light.

Now he found his eye caught by brown people whenever one popped up he didn’t know. There was a cute Filipina a year above him at school and a couple of Tamil boys in senior school. One of Crane’s students was Chinese. But when it came down to it, ninety-nine percent of people he came across were white.

Briar missed being able to blend in. He was sick of being the one in a hundred.

~o~o~o~

Tris was wearing rubber gloves and scrubbing the shower tiling steadily. Daja’s sense of fairness told her she should offer to help, but there weren’t many times Tris came across as being at peace with herself, and doing household chores was one of them. Daja didn’t want to interrupt it.

“I’m going to be about half an hour,” said Tris. “I just won’t have time for anything on the weekend.”

“I’ll do the toilet, if you like,” Daja offered. “I’m not busy.”

Tris held out the toilet cleaner. “Go raibh maith agat,” she tried valiantly.

Daja grinned. “Tá fáilte romhat.”


	5. Chapter 5

“We don’t need them in our lives,” said Rosethorn. “A wound has to close before it can properly heal.”

The words were hollow to Tris. Rosethorn came and sat down at the table. “You hoped that one good relative could somehow redeem the rest of them. Even if Aymery was an angel walking this earth, he couldn’t do that.”

_We_ , Rosethorn had said. _We_ don’t need them. _Our_ lives. Rosethorn wasn’t looking at her, so Tris could look up. 

“Mine are still on the old farm, last I heard.”

“How long ago?”

Rosethorn thought for a moment. “Eleven years now.”

~o~o~o~

“This may not be something that’s pleasant to hear, but it’s important that you know,” Vedris said. “My nephew and his wife, your parents, were not philanthropists. They were jet-setters. The last thing I would recommend you ever do is model your own life on theirs.”

Sandry blinked, stung by the harshness of his words. Maybe her uncle hadn’t thought very highly of Sandry’s parents and their work, but –

“The last thing _ever_?”

Something softened in her uncle’s face. “I would be sorry to see you take your good heart and bright mind and fritter them away,” he said.

~o~o~o~

They weren’t going right into the city today. Briar didn’t know if he wanted to go back, but he knew for sure Rosethorn didn’t want him to. She probably didn’t want him back in Melbourne at all, but they couldn’t stay away forever.

Briar didn’t bother telling her that just about anywhere they could go, he’d already been. They were down for three days, working in gardens through Springvale and Dandy and Cranbourne. He hadn’t remembered a whole lot about his time out this way, not off the top of his head, but it was coming back to him now. 

~o~o~o~

After the long drive up into the mountains, the road wet with rain and clouds grey overhead, Daja had almost been expecting some kind of dwarven cavern, full of hot metal and fizzing steam. Disappointingly, the forge just looked like a huge warehouse from the outside.

Inside was everything Daja had hoped for. With specialised machines, you got cookie-cutter, conventional results. With just the simple, powerful fundamentals at your fingertips, the limits on what you could make were sky-high.

Frostpine stretched his arms out wide to the side and clapped Daja on the shoulder. “We’ll be making nails.”


	6. Chapter 6

It wasn’t just his footwork that was perfect, either. Every part of his body was part of the dance. It was like he didn’t even realise he was playing a game; he just so happened to be dancing a perfect score.

He spun side-on for a fraction of a second, and Sandry quickly hit pause and scrolled back. She’d seen that boy before. Come to think of it, she recognised the machine as well.

Where had she seen him before? There were no clues on the video. Its description was just “smashed it yeeeeeeeah”.

Sandry hit play again, thinking.

~o~o~o~

Tris knew Lark wouldn’t reject her. She knew Lark would be gentle and kind. But she’d never said it out loud before, however much she’d discussed it with Sandry, Daja and Briar – mostly Sandry, who was like a dog with a bone only with worse manners.

Lark waited, all patience and tact. For once Tris wished Lark was a bit more like Rosethorn, who liked to get conversations over and done with and move on.

“You don’t call me, Sandry and Daja ‘the girls’ any more,” said Tris.

“No,” Lark agreed.

“Because Briar doesn’t?”

Lark nodded.

Tris swallowed. “You’re right.”

~o~o~o~

“Really?” said Briar, holding his arms out and looking down at himself.

Lark nodded. “It suits you.”

“Your mum’s right,” said a random white woman holding a bunch of bags. “Very handsome.”

_Who the fuck asked you?_ Briar wanted to say, heat rising to his face. Lark laid a hand on his shoulder and he bit back the words.

“It feels funny,” he said, fiddling with the tie. He couldn’t quite breathe.

“You’ll get used to it,” the woman said. “My boy was the same when he got his first suit.”

Briar looked at Lark, pleading. _Make her shut up._

~o~o~o~

Rizu went up on her tiptoes and kissed Daja softly. Daja thought she might pass out from shock. Holding hands had been bad enough. This she might not even survive.

And then Rizu took her lips away from Daja’s, and that was immeasurably worse. Her mind swirling, Daja reached out to pull Rizu’s head slowly back towards hers. Again, they kissed.

“Okay,” said Rizu after a moment. She giggled and put the tips of two of her fingers on Daja’s lips. Her own lips were very red. “I was going to ask if you liked me, but this works too.”


	7. Chapter 7

“How do you meditate while you fight?” said Briar, breathing hard. “Distracting as shit.”

Daja shook her head. “It’s the opposite. If you empty your mind, the movements are the only thing there is. Everything’s simple.”

“Fighting without thinking sounds like a deathwish.” He came at her with first one end of the bata and then the other, switching hands quick as blinking. “Better you than me.”

Daja kept her bata vertical and blocked automatically, her head clear and movements efficient. “It’s not just fighting,” she said. “If I can’t meditate under pressure, meditate and hit things, I can’t work."

~o~o~o~

It was only a little bit strange being at Frostpine’s place without Daja. Frostpine was a friend, and though he always insisted on “having a yap” with his guests, he was also very good at settling into the background of a place. Tris barely noticed he was there.

Then there was Kirel.

It wasn’t his fault, Tris knew. Just like Tris was a short, fat weather witch who could explode the whole house if she felt like it, Kirel was a two-metre-tall Anglo-Aussie male.

Neither of them could help it, but Tris didn’t have to like it.

~o~o~o~

“Sandry.”

It took a long moment for Sandry to drag herself out of the world of water frames and spinning mules and big gloomy factories in cold, damp, far-off England and focus on the mug of Milo under her nose.

“Time for a break, I think,” said Lark.

Sandry took the warm mug and looked back down at her book. She could still hear the phantom whirring and clunking of the machines in her ears.

“The book will wait for you,” said Lark. “Humans, though, need food and drink and to reassure their loved ones they’re not wasting away.”

~o~o~o~

A wave of nostalgia came over Briar when he saw a little kid with a dirty face and a mess of black hair sliding through the busy crowd. It hadn’t been so long ago that would’ve been him, professional-like, going about his business.

But they either had hands beyond anything Briar had seen or they weren’t picking anybody’s pocket at all. Just something about the way this kid moved caught his eye. Something about the head down, the shoulders tight together.

A man selling gemstones looked up when the kid reached his stall. “Hey girl,” he said. “You’re late.”


	8. Chapter 8

Niko wasn’t as good of a teacher as Rosethorn or Lark or Frostpine. He talked too much without saying anything. Like, Briar didn’t care about hundred-year-old history in the first place, but what was stopping Niko from actually trying to make it interesting? Europe was tearing itself fully to shreds and all Niko could talk about was treaties and dates. At least there should be a good story or two in it.

“Briar,” said Niko, closing his book. “Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?”

_Old enough for an adult prison_. The thought made him wince.

~o~o~o~

“It used to be all Australians in towns like this, my mum says. Now we’re getting overflow from the big cities and they’re everywhere.”

“Your mum sounds like a racist,” Tris commented.

He gaped at her.

“Don’t be offended,” she said. “Mine was too. All my family.”

“My mum’s not racist,” he said. “It’s white people who built this country.”

“White people from where?”

“From Europe. Britain. England.”

“Foreigners, then,” said Tris. “I see.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I thought you were cool.”

“There’s your mistake,” said Tris, returning her attention to her work. “Only a fool would think that.”

~o~o~o~

“Do I need to ask how your evening went?” Rosethorn asked about five minutes into the drive.

“Bad,” said Sandry with feeling. “It went bad.”

“Hmm.”

“You’re so smart to date women and not bother with men.”

“I know what you’re saying, but I’m not as wise as you think. I’ve been involved with a man or two in my time.”

“ _Why_?”

Rosethorn laughed, which on its own was enough of a shock to lift Sandry partway out of her gloom. “Good question. I suppose they have their charms, some of them.”

“That’s the problem,” grumbled Sandry. “They’re all charm.”

~o~o~o~

Daja closed her eyes and tried to think. Ben wanted so much for her to get involved in the company, and a fair-sized part of Daja wanted that too. It was her family legacy. How could she turn it down?

It would be much simpler if Frostpine wasn’t being so cagey about her apprenticeship. Kirel was qualified, so there was finally a spot open for her. Why didn’t he want Daja to take it?

And then there was the third direction. There was always a third path to be taken – God forbid a choice ever be simple for once.


	9. Chapter 9

“Come on,” he said, big brown eyes crinkled at the corners.

He _was_ cute, with his silly grin and dimples and the way he always said her name with a bit of a hiss on the S, his eyes fixed on hers. She might even want to dance with him, if –

If what? 

He tilted his head, a little frown on his face. “What’s wrong?”

Sandry opened her mouth but didn’t know what to say. _I liked you better when you liked me less?_ That would hurt him, and she didn’t want to do that.

Just one dance couldn’t hurt.

~o~o~o~

“You’ve gotta get outside more,” said Briar from Tris’s doorway. “You’ll go see-through.”

Tris didn’t look up. “I’m busy.”

“Little Bear’s crying because you don’t take him for walks any more.”

“I’m _busy_.” Tris gathered some air together and shut the door in his face – didn’t slam it, but very firmly closed it.

_You know I can just open this again, right,_ said Briar wryly.

_You know you can always take Little Bear for walks yourself, right_ , retorted Tris, before remembering she was ignoring him.

_I can’t. I’m too excitable._

_You’re sixteen years old, Briar,_ said Tris. _Grow up._

~o~o~o~

Nia took her by one hand and Jory the other. 

“Come on,” said Jory, bright and encouraging. “We won’t let you fall.”

The more Daja thought, the more she realised what an obviously terrible idea this was. 

“You said you wanted to learn,” said Nia.

“And if you _are_ going to fall, isn’t it better you do it now, when Rizu’s not here?”

“What?” How on God’s green earth did Jory know about that? How was it that these two always knew everything?

“When she comes back you can go skating together,” Nia pointed out.

Daja pushed off the wall.

~o~o~o~

Rosethorn sat on her bed, right next to his, and waited for him.

“I just thought it wasn’t that scary,” Briar said, once the words came to him. “You know, nothing ever really got to me too bad.” _I thought I was tough._ He could feel his fingers trembling. Wasn’t he the one who always had steady hands?

She came over and sat cross-legged in front of him, and she looked at him straight across. “Sometimes it takes a very long time for the things we’ve buried to find their way free,” she said, taking his hands in hers. 


	10. Chapter 10

“He never used to talk to me about work,” Sandry told Daja as they worked to set up the loom. “Now he keeps asking me my opinions about things and how I might try and solve problems he’s got.”

Daja shrugged. “I hope he’s paying you for the consultations.”

“I’m serious,” said Sandry. “It feels like some kind of test.”

“It’s probably a family footsteps thing.”

That made Sandry grin. “He wants me to go into politics?”

“Is that such a silly idea?”

“But I do this,” Sandry said, the smile fading from her face. “This is what I love.”

~o~o~o~

“Why the fuck is there barbed wire on the fence if it’s a community fucking garden?” said Briar, too tired and too pissed off to remember his manners. 

The dude practically shit himself. He glanced past Briar nervously.

“I’m right here,” said Briar, moving into his eyeline.

“There’s valuable tools and equipment in the shed,” the man said, with a little tremble in his voice. “This is a volunteer-run and funded garden, and theft –”

“You think a bit of barbed wire’s gonna stop a real thief?”

“It’s more of a deterrent –”

“Yeah,” said Briar. “I know what it is.”

~o~o~o~

Keth sat cross-legged on the ground and Glaki jumped straight into his lap. He smiled, and it was an oddly soft expression on his big rock of a head.

“So you were a glassblower,” said Tris. She didn’t want to sit down on the grass, but the longer she just stood here like this, the stranger it would get.

Keth nodded and wrapped his arms around Glaki’s middle. “Back home. I was very good. Hard to believe now.”

“And then you were struck.”

The whole right side of his face twitched. He hugged Glaki tighter. “Then I was struck.”

~o~o~o~

Daja moved her fingers methodically, watching the little bones ripple in her hand. She made a fist and ran her other thumb over her knuckles, feeling their ridges and grooves.

How often did she think about how many moving parts went into such simple gestures? Humans had come a long way since the days of the hook hand and peg leg, but could any man-made device really come close to God’s own creation?

But it wasn’t about that, was it. Daja’s ego was neither here nor there. It was about healing and what it meant to have a duty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's it! I hope you've enjoyed these, and I hope sooner rather than later I can fill in some of the enormous gaping gaps between them with an actual story or two. If anyone has any particular requests for stuff from here to be expanded on, I'll certainly take it into consideration. 
> 
> Otherwise, thanks for reading and commenting and being your usual awesome selves. Till next time!


End file.
